The present invention relates to a processing for charge request data, by which it is possible to perform collective processing of charge request data including contractor information issued from a charge requesting organization and amount of charge, and to process said data for each account of a charge paying organization for each day of payment.
With rapid progress and propagation of cashless payment and automatic payment, fees or charges such as electric charges, telephone charges, gas charges, water charges, television subscription fee, etc. are now generally paid through automatic withdrawal from bank account of a user in case the user is a private person. To withdraw and pay these charges, each local office of the requesting organization (i.e. company or organization providing supply or services) checks meters and sends withdrawal data to each bank concerned and also issues detailed account statement to each user. Then, the user prepares ample sum of fund at the bank account, and the charges are withdrawn from the specified account and paid.
However, automatic transfer payment system of charges as described above is widely utilized only when the user is a private person, while it is not usually adopted in case of companies and other business enterprises. In particular, in case of large-scale companies having wide network of offices, stores, branch offices, or agencies all over the country, the above payment system is not adopted. As shown in FIG. 1, charges are mostly paid against a payment slip issued by a company which provides supply or services. This is because it is generally the accounting principle of business enterprises to pay the charge after confirmation, i.e. to pay the charge after receipt of a bill and after confirming the details of the request and the amount of charge. More concretely, automatic withdrawal system from bank account, in which payment is confirmed after charge has been paid, is not suitable for business practices. Also, because the date of withdrawal of the charge and the amount of the charge are not confirmed in advance, the business firms are not always prepared to keep enough fund in daily cash flow of the business and there may be much waste or loss of fund to always keep a certain amount of fund at the account.
For this reason, if it is supposed, for example, that charges must be paid each month to 4 companies in average at a local office in case of a business firm, which has 3,500 bases (local offices) all over the country, 168,000 pieces of payment slips must be processed each year. Also, 6-8 payment slips are to be processed for each local office each month, including 2 slips for electric charges (high voltage and low voltage), 3-5 slips for telephone charges, including facsimile, portable telephone, etc., and 1 slip for water charge. Further, if it is supposed that there are 9 electric power companies, 12 telephone companies, 100 gas companies, 800 water supply companies all over the country, there are 921 companies in all which are collecting public utility charges. When the payment of charges such as payment to local self-governing bodies (fixed property tax, city planning tax, and automobile tax), television subscription fee, newspaper subscription fee, lease fee, land or house rent, various membership fees, etc. are included, the amounts of the charges to be processed are really enormous. On the other hand, in case of a mobile type enterprise, which installs local construction offices only during the period of construction of a building, commercial dealings are changed almost daily due to new installation or shifting of local offices. In such case, the management of charge processing is more complicated, and field account settlement principle is adopted. If these local transactions are collectively processed at a center, there are so many numbers and types of charge requesting organizations, and it is difficult to adequately process the charge payment. The procedure to check the amount of cash withdrawal from the bank account is as complicated as the case of the payment against payment slips. In the post-processing type automatic transfer account system proposed by the bank, there is limitation in capacity. In addition to the situations as described above, considerable time is required to take the procedure to switch over to automatic withdrawal and payment system. Automatic withdrawal and payment are performed in some cases, while the payment against payment slips is adopted in some other cases. In general, charge payment processing is now very complicated and troublesome in case of large-scale business enterprises.